


Sun, Sand, and Sky

by Margaery



Category: Tennis RPF
Genre: Banter, Beaches, Bisexuality, F/M, M/M, Open Relationships
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-15
Updated: 2013-06-15
Packaged: 2017-12-15 01:27:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,514
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/843718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Margaery/pseuds/Margaery
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Rafa's just trying to take a nap in the sun, but Xisca and Pico have found a video of a certain Ferru photoshoot.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sun, Sand, and Sky

**Author's Note:**

> [This](http://fhm.es/barralibre/deportes/articulo/hablamos-david-ferrer) is the photoshoot they watch.
> 
> For screenshots, see the notes at the end. :)

The sunshine on his closed eyes is warm and golden. Rafa could travel the whole world – he has, in fact – and never find such perfect perfection as the touch of the Manacor sun.

It’s as close to a day off as he ever has, here in the lull between Roland Garros and Wimbledon. He’s not the fondest of days off, not after those achingly long seven months, but he knows he needs them sometimes. His body isn’t as young as it once was, even beyond the disaster area that is his knee, and a few hours of sun will “do him good,” as Toni said gruffly this morning before sending him out to the beach with Xisca and Pico.

Ah, Xisca and Pico. He can hear them chatting nearby, words smearing at the edge of his consciousness; he can’t quite concentrate, not with the sand under his skin and the sky overhead, the smell of the sea in the air. He wonders whether Manacor is always this beautiful, or if it’s the joy from Roland Garros bleeding over, the joy and the relief. He knows Manacor is always beautiful, but it’s hard to compare feelings over time, to know if today’s Manacor feels more beautiful to him than it did three months ago, or five, or eight. 

He decides to stop thinking. He drifts.

Xisca’s not really chatting, he realizes gradually. Pico’s chatting at her, telling some story, his easy banter tripping along like the waves against the beach. It’s calming.

It’s calming, that is, until Pico suddenly stops being lulling and squawks instead. “What? You can’t get on your laptop at the beach. It’s _the beach_. It’s Rafa’s day off!”

“Rafa’s asleep,” Xisca says, logically if not entirely accurately. Rafa fights back the urge to grin. “And it’s not _the_ beach, it’s _our_ beach. We’re sitting like ten steps from the house.”

Pico sounds sulky. Rafa can imagine the pout on his face - Pico’s pout is legendary. “It’s the _principle_ of the thing. You can’t work on the beach.”

“I’m not working,” Xisca tells him, long-sufferingly. Rafa recognizes the tone from when he loses one of his lucky socks in the laundry and Xisca has to walk him through the house until they find it (usually it’s hiding under his bed, because socks are evil that way). “My friend texted me something and I’m just checking it out. Don’t worry, it won’t take long, and then you can get back to telling me about Nico and Santi’s mutual and unrecognized crushes on each other.”

Pico makes a strangled sound. “I was telling you about Santi’s pranks!”

“You say potato, I say potahto,” Xisca tells him, and Rafa can hear the click of her fingers over her laptop keys. “Oh my.”

“What?” Pico says, and the sunshine on Rafa’s face is abruptly blotted out as 185 cm of Argentinian sits up next to him. “Show me.”

“You wouldn’t appreciate it properly,” Xisca says. 

“Try me,” Pico wheedles, probably batting his eyelashes at her. Rafa happens to know that she’s rather susceptible to wheedling. Not that he’s ever had to use it very much himself. He has a smolder. 

Luckily the other two seem to be too preoccupied to notice the smile that creeps over Rafa’s face as he thinks about his awesome smolder. “Is that…” Pico asks, sounding disbelieving.

“Yes,” Xisca says, sounding impressed. “It is. Damn.”

Silence for a few moments, apart from some tinny-sounding music coming from Xisca’s speakers, and then, “Oh, come on. Is that _really_ necessary?” That’s Pico, sounding slightly fascinated despite his voiced incredulousness.

Xisca’s laughing at him. “From the perspective of someone who enjoys a handsome shirtless man – yes, yes, it’s always necessary.”

“It’s a _shaving commercial_ ,” Pico says, sounding wounded. “A shaving commercial that looks like _porn_.”

A shaving commercial that looks like porn? Rafa frowns. The sun may actually have gone to his head. Stan’s always telling him to use more sunscreen. Maybe this is what he’s so afraid of. Rafa privately thinks Stan looks a bit stupid with bright white stripes slathered all over his face, but if the alternative is dreaming up porn shaving commercials…he frowns even more.

“Oh, look, you woke sleeping beauty,” Xisca tells Pico, chidingly. 

“I haven’t been sleeping,” Rafa protests, undermining his argument with a massive yawn. He stretches, suppressing a purr of contentment as the kinks in his muscles unfurl. Usually he’d just let the purr out, but that’s been known to bring Xisca tumbling happily into his lap, and Pico gets annoyed at that and throws things at them until they take it inside. (And then Pico sulks at being abandoned.)

“Sure,” Xisca says. Rafa opens his eyes, squinting against the sunshine, to see her smiling down at him from her chair. Her laugh-crinkles are as beautiful as the sea, and he presses fingers against her ankle, knowing she’ll feel the caress and sense what it means. She’s smart that way.

Pico pokes him. “Xisca’s looking at porn. Do you mind if Xisca looks at porn?”

Rafa looks at him and raises an eyebrow. “I go to sleep for a few minutes and you and Xisca forget all about me?”

“Not with me,” Pico says instantly, throwing his hands up. “It was all her idea. I’m blameless in all of this. I wasn’t watching the porn. I don’t need porn.”

Rafa turns away from his chattering and looks up at Xisca, giving her his best elaborate eye-roll. She stifles a giggle behind her hand, and Pico pauses suspiciously in his litany of innocence. “What? What are you two doing?”

“Nothing,” Xisca says, and jumps out of her chair in order to sink down next to Rafa. She’ll get sand all over her skirt, but Rafa knows she doesn’t care. They live on a beach; sand gets everywhere, and all you can do is laugh and pick it out of your hair and brush it off your lover’s face, kissing the trail left behind. “Here, I’ll show him.”

It’s not porn, which relieves Rafa. Not that he’s against porn necessarily, but there’s a place for everything and porn doesn’t have a place on the beach when he’s sitting next to Pico, of all people. 

Although he’s not sitting next to Pico for long. “I’m going to go grab a beer,” Pico says, scratching his belly. “You want one?”

“Toni threw out all the beer the guys left last time,” Xisca tells him. “You’ll have to go to the shop.”

“Rafa doesn’t even drink,” Pico says, disgustedly. “Ugh, Toni.”

Xisca sticks her tongue out at him merrily. “Rafa doesn’t, but I do sometimes. And then I keep him up too late.” She waits a moment before adding, “And wear him out.”

“Yes, thank you, I figured that part out,” Pico says, making a rude gesture at her.

"Toni doesn't like it when I wear Rafa out," Xisca informs him.

Pico screws up his face. “Really out of here now. And just for that mental image, I won’t bring you back any beer.”

He will, and he’ll bring her flowers too, because he’s thoughtful like that. In the meantime, though, he’s gone through into the house, and Xisca’s reaching back down to unpause the video. (Rafa’s still not sure exactly what it is, except that it’s Not Porn.)

It turns out to be a confusing mashup of a shaving commercial and a fashion photoshoot, starring _Ferru_ of all people. Rafa cocks his head and watches as they dress Ferru, shave Ferru, and in one slightly disturbing sequence, rub oil into Ferru’s skin and then pan the camera achingly slowly down his shirtless chest.

“Almost as good as your Armani shoot,” Xisca says, fondly. “Although I got to climb on after that one.”

“He’s wearing a lot more clothes than I was,” Rafa says, trying to cover a blush, and not entirely sure whether he’s defending his honor or Ferru’s.

Xisca notices the blush, of course. She’s good at noticing things. “You should call him and tell him that next time he should lose the jeans.”

“Xisca!” Rafa says, but he can’t help laughing. Poor Ferru would turn all shades of colors. 

Except…would he?

It’s an odd thought to have pop into his mind suddenly. Ferru’s not shy around his mates, of course, but he’s certainly always been shy in public. Self-effacing, that’s the word, genuine, quiet. He’s never been a Feli or a Nando, never been a Tommy or even a Pico. Surely a suggestion from Rafa that Ferru pose in his underwear would only make him stutter, when Pico would tell him where he could stick his suggestions and Nando would make lewd comments and Feli would grin and immediately start stripping.

But as the video plays, Rafa wonders if his impressions of Ferru are really that correct after all.

He’s not sure what’s triggered this…maybe it really is the Manacor sun. 

Or maybe it’s the way Ferru holds himself; the way he puts his hands on his hips; the way the open white shirt swirls around his perfect torso; the way he stares at the camera, those sea-deep eyes calmly challenging; the way he lets the fashion guy smear oil across his chest, his arms, his hands without a single blink; the way he slides his fingers through his hair, molasses-slow, as if he knows exactly the way it would make a woman like Xisca suck in her breath; the way he smolders – and Rafa’s never seen his own smolder, but if it’s half as good as Ferru’s he’s doing well…

“Like what you see?” Xisca asks, softly, interrupting his thoughts.

Rafa doesn’t keep secrets from her. She knows every inch of him. “It’s _Ferru_.”

Xisca tangles her hand with his, sand caught between them. “Just because you never saw it before doesn’t mean you can’t see it now.”

Rafa glances back at her screen, frozen on a moment in time: Ferru, staring away from the camera, letting everyone look their fill. This isn’t the Ferru he thought he knew – but that’s not entirely unwelcome. “He’s gorgeous.”

“He’s sexy,” Xisca corrects, giggling lightly. “How do they say it in English? _Hubba hubba_.”

“You and Mirka need to stop hanging around with Sara so much,” Rafa tells her, but he can’t help laughing himself. 

Ferru-on-the-screen’s gorgeous lines don’t move, paused forever in time. This Ferru isn't the man Rafa faced across the net just a few days ago, the man who fought his heart out to reach his first Grand Slam final, the man Rafa defeated but pulled into a hug in the locker room afterwards, opponents but above all friends. This Ferru is someone new, and when Rafa feels goosebumps run down his arms, they’re not entirely from the sunshine.

“I’d offer to roleplay,” Xisca says, squeezing his hand, “but I don’t think I could do a competent Ferru. I don’t have his muscles, for one thing. Or those eyes!”

Rafa brings her hand to his lips, pressing a kiss to her sandy knuckles. “I like you just the way you are.”

She smiles at him, happy. He can’t handle being this lazy for long, the tension of inaction humming in his veins, needing to explode into movement, but he likes being lazy with her as long as he can. In a little bit he’ll bully Pico into hitting with him, or if Pico’s already started on his second beer by then he’ll call Toni. But for now, for now he can do this, he can watch a video with his girlfriend and talk about hot boys with her and let the sunshine beat down on his skin.

“So,” Xisca says, “what outfit’s hotter, the shirtless one, or the stripy one, or the flowery one, or the white-shirt one?”

Rafa can only remember half of those. He’s no stylist. “Uh. The shirtless one.”

“Men,” Xisca says, and ruffles his hair with her free hand. “Always going for the obvious choice.”

He picks up her laptop and sets it gently up on her chair, so that he can roll closer, tucking his head into the curve of her shoulder. “What about you, then?”

She gives this question the careful consideration she seems to think it deserves. “White shirt. There’s nothing like an open white shirt – it lets you see what’s beneath, while still giving you something to tear off.”

Xisca’s no weakling, but Rafa thinks she doesn’t realize how difficult it is to actually tear clothing. Now he, he could do it no problem; he imagines tearing the shirt off Ferru, as Ferru laughed and rolled his eyes and reached for him; he imagines Ferru pushing him back onto the bed and climbing on top of him, that smolder Rafa’s only just noticed shining out of his eyes full force.

“You want to go back to cavewoman days?” he asks, through suddenly dry lips. “Me like, me take, me tear off clothes.”

She laughs, and he hears it echo under his ear. “Exactly. Or I could just ask, I suppose. The Ferru in that video looks like he’d say yes to anything if you asked him nicely.”

Rafa imagines asking Ferru to come home to him and Xisca, to let them take off his clothes, to let Xisca kiss him and let Rafa do what he so seldom gets the chance to these days - slide down a man’s body and…

“He looks like he’d be such a firecracker in bed,” Xisca says, mournfully.

Mournfully, because they both know there’s no way they’re going to ask one of Rafa’s closest tennis friends to share their bed. For now, their adventures are necessarily few and far between; it just isn’t safe, for so many reasons, and it just isn’t practical, for so many others. (It’s hard enough for _them_ to have sex often enough to keep them both happy – Rafa’s overly protective of his phone for multiple excellent reasons – let alone deal with having to try to integrate others.) 

But they’ll have time enough later, as Xisca’s always reminding him cheerfully. All the time in the world, when his racquets are gathering dust and his lucky socks can hide under the bed as often as they please. Then they can have all the adventures they want – and maybe even invite old tennis friends to become more than friends.

For now, though, they can fantasize about anyone they please, and play games, and talk about ripping people’s clothes off. For now, they can watch soft-core porn masquerading as a razor commercial/fashion photoshoot, and salivate over the perfect V disappearing into Ferru’s jeans. For now, they can be sunkissed twenty-somethings in love lusting over boys together, and leave everything else till later.

For now, Rafa checks his watch and then slides his fingers under Xisca’s skirt, because he knows exactly how far to the shop it is, and they still have at least ten minutes before Pico gets back. 

“Raf,” Xisca says, with a little gasp.

Rafa smiles, and leans down to kiss her under the impossibly blue Manacor sky.

**Author's Note:**

> Screenshots of the Ferru photoshoot:


End file.
